


The One Left Behind

by StripySock



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Content Notes Inside, Incest, M/M, No underage
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-13
Updated: 2014-11-13
Packaged: 2018-02-25 04:58:45
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,962
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2609381
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StripySock/pseuds/StripySock
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Sam's thirteen and Dean's seventeen, John's hit by a curse that means he can barely function. Sam's desire to settle down turns out to be a monkey's paw of a wish and when he finally gets out, the only thing left to pull him back in is Dean - who doesn't even know what he wants.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The One Left Behind

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Sam/Dean Minibang 2014
> 
> With big thanks to amber1960 for betaing, all mistakes that remain are my own.
> 
> Click through to the end notes to see content warnings that contain mild spoilers.

"Sam's coming home," John says over breakfast. He's holding up a newspaper in front of his face, not to read it, just so Dean can’t see him. Dean doesn't mention that it's upside down. He just grunts an acknowledgement and takes the butter, spreads it on a piece of toast, the rasp of the knife grating on his nerves.

 

“Got the jelly?” he asks, because hell, he doesn’t want to talk about Sam.

 

His request is ignored. "Dean, I need to tell you something," John says, and the old sound is in his voice. The one Dean remembers from before all of this. It’s confidential, lowered, and John resorts to it every time Sam comes up in the conversation, like they’re entwined in his mind, like just hearing Sam’s name reminds him of the message he needs to drill into Dean again and again, scraps of knowledge picked up somewhere on the road and relayed for the fiftieth, the hundredth time in the utmost secrecy.

 

"Dad, is this about the demon?" he says, and he can hear the weariness in his own voice. "I know, okay," and he hears the newspaper rustle again, and his father slide the jelly over, keeps his eyes on his own piece of toast. "I know," he says again, quieter. It’s nothing new, just the same old dry chewed up facts and it’s nothing to do with them because there isn’t one bastard thing either of them can do about it.

 

"Good boy," John says with only a trace of hesitation in his voice as though he wonders how Dean knows because John sure as hell doesn’t remember telling him over and over, and he puts down the paper and stretches his fingers out, knuckles cracking one by one, sad little pops in the almost silence of their dead kitchen. "Time for work?"

 

"Yeah," Dean says, clamps down hard on his tongue so he can say nothing else, taste of strawberry jelly artificial and sweet in his mouth, clinging to his teeth like all the truths he can’t tell. John stands and heads to his room to get ready, hums this tune while he does, that makes no sense at all. Dean waits for a few moments and then throws the toast into the trash. He fucking hates eating breakfast at night, but today's been a bad day and breakfast calms John down. Dean thinks it might be that feeling of getting started - getting out on the road again, an interrupted rhythm that hasn’t been picked up for years. It isn't like it hurts Dean to eat cereal and toast and pretend like it isn't pitch black outside. He just fucking hates bookending his days. Can’t stand to see his father’s shoulders relax when he hears the rattle of the bowls, like he’s some sort of dog.

 

He knows from past experience that John will have headed into the room, lain down and gone to sleep. Today’s verging on a bad day. Some days it’s like his dad is normal, his old self again. He’ll go down to work at the yard, where Martin'll give him jobs to do, things with his hands that don’t require anything but muscle memory and the sort of smarts that exist in a moment. Martin's a good man, he knows they need the work and he's got respect for John as a fellow ex-Marine. Sometimes he and John talk into the night, digging up old pseudo-war stories, reminiscing about boot-camp, talking about places and things Dean’s never known, Martin navigating John’s vacancies, his pain, with enviable care. The far past is a safe place, not near enough to hurt. Even better, he's built like a brick shithouse and he can take care of John if something goes down, restrain him until Dean can get there and talk the situation down. If Martin slips John a bottle of whisky every now and then, well Dean can turn a blind eye to that.

 

"You should've been a negotiator Dean," Martin told him after the last time, no word of the thought Dean was sure he had, not as good at it as Sam.  "One of them police guys talking to the terrorists." It's a double edged compliment Dean guesses, because with no qualifications Dean can't be shit, and his smooth tongue don't work for much besides getting second dates and getting his father to put down the tire-iron and let go of Randy's neck. He took it as Martin meant it though, shrugged it off, dragged his father back home, put him in the one old rocking chair, and came as near to blowing his own brains out as he thinks he'll ever get.

 

The hell of it is of course that his daddy ain't lying. There's bad things in the dark, and sometimes they seek the Winchesters out, moths to a flame, sensing the weak, sensing the broken. Like there’s something that comes pouring off the whole damn lot of them and just screams target. That’s why the house is secure, there's shotguns loaded with salt that'd give any gun inspector a coronary, and Bobby Singer had drawn them the marks on the walls and the floors before John had chased him off with harsh words and a bottle of Jack thrown at his head, a waste of whisky if you asked Dean. Bobby hasn't been back since but Dean knows enough to keep the marks touched up and clear, and Bobby rings every now and then, to see if they're still alive. Still alive, Dean always says, and lets the unspoken questions go unanswered.

 

When he clears the table and tidies the kitchen, he finds what John was talking about. Sam writes to John, never to Dean. He hadn’t known this letter had come - John must have slipped out early to the mailbox and the thought of that sends a cold shiver down Dean’s spine, the reminder that he can’t be there all the time. It’s a letter in Sam's careful neat handwriting, the handwriting Dean remembers from a thousand assignments all over this same kitchen table. It's childish still, but Sam writes like a pro, like the lawyer he's always wanted to be. There's not a word of Dean, not a mention, and _fuck you too_  Dean thinks. He tells John he's coming home for the summer. Not a word about not seeing them these past two years, and Dean is filled with a sudden, blinding anger. Sam's included his phone number but only because he doesn't expect them to ring. Dean still knows his brother like he knows himself, and there's a mean delight that fills his bones with how much Sam would hate that Dean gets him like that. So Dean dials his number on his shitty brick cell and gets Sam's voice-mail, bright and perky and sunshine filled, clicks off before he ever says a word.

 

He wants to tell him to stay the fuck away but he knows it’d sound like the lie that it is. Sam doesn't ring back and Dean thinks that is that. Steals a bottle of whisky from the stash his daddy thinks he keeps secret, right there under the stairs with a tarp over it, and makes a dent in it because it’s easier to knock back a bottle than it is to think about Sam. He's still up first, and he stinks, alcohol sweating from his pores into his clothes because he fell asleep just like that, chair in the front room and now his neck is giving him shit.

 

Hot water tank is broken again and he makes do with the cold, lets it splash against his face, raw lungfuls of air almost painful in between the water sprays. He prefers it this way what with the sun gearing up outside for another blindingly hot day. He wishes sometimes that if his father had to get fucked over by a witch he could've done it in a colder state. He thunks his head once against the tiles, and then twice because the first time didn't work, and tries not to think about Sam coming back, and John curled up in his room, head down and dreaming.

 

He'd thought today would be bad after last night, but it’s never as predictable as that, never as simple as bad following bad or good following good. John is lucid, almost full cognition back today. He knows Dean, he knows where they are. He knows they had to quit hunting because a witch got the drop on him, and that some days he ain’t all that, and he even knows enough not to apologize for it for which Dean thanks anything that might be listening. It’s like his dad is present again - even on good days when he’s fine for work, he’s not necessarily like this, and Dean hates the way it still makes him feel - hope ever present in his chest like today, today’s the end and his father will somehow stay like this.

 

John talks about heading in to work and Dean reminds him that it's a Saturday - Martin doesn’t do Saturdays though he opens on Sundays. Relief curls down his spine though, because John being this clear headed means Dean can head to work and be reasonably sure that nothing will go wrong. He slings his clothes from yesterday into the laundry basket and leaves, watches John settle down in front of the TV though that’ll only last for minutes - he knows that when he comes back the place will be fucking shining, laundry done, floors scrubbed and all the rest. Early training trumps witch induced brain injury, and his father is always restless whether it’s a good or a bad day, as though either way he knows this isn’t where he’s meant to be.

 

When he gets back, Impala parked up and safe in the tiny lean-to that serves as a garage, groceries to hand in the passenger seat, he knows before he even gets out of the car that there's something different about the house. Different only ever means bad. The town doesn't visit the Winchesters, even the ones who are friendly, even the ones who sympathize with their loss, even the ones curious enough to try and nose out their business. Dean's never even brought a girl back here, it's always her place or the car, or sometimes, if they're both horny enough and she's not picky, in a field somewhere on a blanket he keeps for the purpose. He shifts cautiously, so the concealed weapon he'd got a permit for ages back is ready to draw, and gets a silver knife out of the glove compartment. It's not enough but it'll have to do, and he tries not to think of all the ways he isn’t covered, back vulnerable and bare and open. When he opens the door though, nothing leaps at him. There's just laughter coming from the kitchen, and he knows then and there that Sam's home.

 

It's funny, that with all the bad blood between Sam and his father, that this meeting isn't more acrimonious Dean thinks, as he pushes open the door and walks on through. Funny that it's his blood shifting with resentment under his skin, where his father looks relaxed and happy to have his second son back. There’s something ironic in the fact that Sam gets on best with their dad when John’s only half there. _I wonder if it's because today he just doesn't remember you leaving_  he thinks of saying, of stripping Sam's smile from his face and replacing it with the guilt that's never gonna stop riding Sam's shoulders, heavy as a black dog pressing him down if he knows anything about his brother. Dean hates that after two years, he still can't do it. He doesn't open his arms though, doesn't hug Sam or draw him down those extra inches that divide them. Just leans back against the wall, arms deliberately folded and grins a grin that's secured him jobs even without a diploma to his name, watches Sam fold himself in a little more.

 

"Hey Dean," Sam says, but there's not a hint of bashfulness, even as he steps back from a clearly aborted attempt at a hug. He doesn't look ashamed, or ashamed of not feeling ashamed. He looks happy and well looked after, and beautiful, and if Dean takes that as a personal insult, well, he gave up believing a long time ago that he was a good person. He knows John is watching them, so he saunters forward and reaches for the ice-box, pulls out a sweating coke.

 

"How long you here for Sam?" he asks, like they're strangers and Sam's dropping by. He's not fooling himself even a little bit, and he probably ain't fooling Sam. Hell, he doubts that even John's convinced, and he feels hot and foolish and flustered in that moment, angry with resentment all coiled up and choking him. Dean doesn't know if he hates Sam more for leaving, for coming back, or himself for not being happy that one of them got out. It can't be healthy, he thinks distantly, to feel this much. He remembers health class and the teacher telling them about fatty deposits that clogged your arteries and squeezed your blood into narrower and narrower channels, and that's exactly what he feels like, like his blood is thicker, like there's something heavy in his veins.

 

"Long enough," Sam says and Dean finishes the coke in one long pull and tosses it in the trash. Sam twitches about that. Before he'd left, he'd been on a recycling kick, saving the earth and all that sort of shit, when he couldn't be bothered with saving his own little patch of it. Screw unfairness, Dean thinks, he's earned the right to make Sam feel uncomfortable.

 

There's a fraught silence where there used to be ease between them, that particular gift dead and buried under the weight of two years. John looks up from where he's sat at the table and looks at Sam narrowly. "How's that girlfriend of yours," he asks, and Sam shrugs.

 

"We broke up," he says, and there's so much unhappiness round his mouth, that Dean almost says the right thing - _I'm sorry, Sammy_. He's schooled himself better than that by now though, learned to tuck some of what he feels inside so that only he knows, just looks past Sam's shoulder like he couldn’t care less about that piece of news. Sam goes on anyway. "She wanted me to come with her this summer," he says in a rush. "Travel, stay with her parents, that sort of thing you know," and no, Dean doesn't know at all, but it doesn't stop a sneer from crawling on his face at the collegeness of it all, and he holds his tongue like he’s got used to doing over the last few years, doesn’t spit out the meanness of his thoughts.

 

"She finished it?" John asks.

 

"I did," Sam says, and it’s not the whole story, but he indicates clearly that that's an end to it by pinning on a smile all over again, only a little less bright than his real one, and asking John a dumb question about the weather.

 

They talk lightly and briefly about other things and Dean keeps silent, swallows back everything he wants to say, makes the dinner, enough for three no conscious thought needed, because he’s done it for the last two years and always had leftovers. He wonders where Sam's gonna sleep. They have a spare room since Sam left, but John's been using it for his woodworking shit since they don't have a shed. The question's answered when he glances in his own room and sees Sam's bag on the bed. He leans his head on the cool thin wood of the door, and tries not to think of anything at all, not Sam, not John or the heavy sick thrill of inevitability that pulses sweetly in his veins, like he always knew Sam would be back.

 

It's still hot outside, midges buzzing and John's looking tired and drawn when Dean comes back in the room, vitality fading as the sun does. The curse is worst around sunset, but Dean's hidden the keys to the Impala, driven inside the small lean-to garage he'd knocked up years ago, and if John wants to get anywhere, get angry at anyone, he's gonna have to walk to find them, and they'll catch up with him long before he gets anywhere. Dean finds himself thinking in plurals again already, can’t catch and restrain his reluctant hope.

 

When John's in his room, fighting against the remorseless movement of his own blood, against the spell that means that he can't keep things straight in his mind anymore, that picks him up and sets back all progress like some endless rewinding clock, self-medicating with whisky as though not remembering is the better part of valour, Sam sits down at the table and looks at Dean. "How have you been?" he asks softly, and whatever Stanford taught Sam apparently it wasn't how to read a situation.

 

"Fuck you," Dean says, but it doesn't come out cold like he wants, just tired and tinny and raw. He doesn't know how he feels. He doesn't have words for what it sounds like in his head sometimes, for how on occasion he’s wondered if John’s curse is catching. It catches him again uneasily, how fast his father became John, hallmarks of all those doctors calling him by his first name right then at the beginning, and now Dean can’t think of him any other way. He stands up, can't bear another moment of this. Sam doesn’t try to stop him from leaving, just sits there at the table hands together like some fucking TV therapist, like he just wants to understand. Dean steps outside, walks blindly through the heavy softness of the humidity, gets lungfuls of something that isn’t quite air and fights back the urge that tells him to let it all out with breathless violence, because he solves things best, body to body.

 

When Dean comes back from the fields that surround the house, Sam’s already asleep on the bed. He doesn’t sprawl like he used to, he’s tucked himself in, long arms against his body, head curved into the pillow, and Dean can hardly look at him without a sick flush of want that burns hot and steady in him, like whisky runs raw through his veins instead of the blood that they share, and it kills him that two years haven’t crushed it or cured him. It’d been there when Sam left, just starting to put out poisonous roots, and maybe that’s why Dean couldn’t forgive Sam, the gnawing endless guilt that consumed him at the thought that maybe Sam had known what Dean was beginning to feel for his eighteen year old brother, the fear and self protection that wove itself around him as bitter resentment because it’s easier to think Sam left because times were tough, than because Dean drove him away.

 

It isn’t normal by any stretch of the imagination that he’s pulling off his clothes and getting in anyway with no thought of basic self-preservation, but what has ever been normal about any of this. They don’t touch at all, parallel lines with no convergence between them. When he closes his eyes, he can hear Sam breathe in and out, too careful to be asleep really, but Dean doesn’t call his bluff, just matches his breaths. There's an easy synchronization between them that nothing else has ever been able to match. He falls asleep like that, hostilities suspended.

 

When he gets up early because the hot water tank isn't going to mend itself and that at least is something he can fix, Sam does as well, tousled and squinty eyed, shrugs on clothes Dean’s never seen to go with his extra height, and follows him out, dogs his heels reminding Dean of the little brother who used to haunt his footsteps right up until he didn’t, until Dean can’t take it anymore. “Why are you here?” he asks, blunt and straightforward, and Sam’s eyes darken in something Dean can’t put a name to only that it scares him, makes his belly clench at the thought of what Sam might say.

 

“You know why,” Sam says, like it’s damn obvious.

 

“No, I really don't,” Dean replies, and throws Sam a toolbag. “Pass me shit when I ask for it,” he says, and there’s a sullen flare in Sam’s eyes that says there might be trouble, but Dean doesn’t acknowledge it. “You want to live here, you work here; you know the rules.”

 

“Fuck you Dean,” and now Sam’s pissed, “I’ve lived here almost as long as you have, don’t pretend like I don’t know the drill.” There’s no past tense in his words, Dean can’t help noticing, doesn’t know if he resents it or lives for it.

 

“Hey, you might have forgotten,” Dean says, and he’s itching for a fight because if he goes on any longer like this, he’s going to shrug out of his own skin from the need, anger all dressed up with nowhere to go. “And you ain’t been round here for some time.”

 

“So that’s what it is,” Sam says, and Dean thinks incredulously that for such a smart kid, Sam can be so fucking stupid that it hurts.

 

“What else would it be?” he says, and holds out his hand for a wrench. Sam slaps it into his hand, the metal cool against his skin for one brief second.

 

“You still hate me for leaving,” he says, and his voice holds something Dean can’t interpret, like the look in Sam’s eyes that he couldn’t name. “Dean, I had to, you know that.”

 

“Sure thing, Sam,” Dean says, aims for flippant and misses by a mile. “Had to get out. I get that. I do.”

 

“No, you don’t,” Sam says, and there’s a note there that gets Dean under his skin. Sam in pain always has and always will. “Jesus Dean, look at this life, look at us. Look at dad,” and he stumbles over that, because they both always will, first losing mom to the fire and then dad to a split-second’s poor timing that Dean’s never gonna stop blaming himself for. He stops for a moment and breathes deep. “Dean, if I could get out, could earn some real money, think of the difference it would make. An actual neurologist to look at Dad for starters,” and he seems to be about to enumerate all the reasons he’s always given and Dean can’t bear to hear them all over again, because Sam’s right, Christ Dean knows he’s right. Hell it’s why he’s angry, with the unjustified rage of someone in the wrong, but it doesn’t make any difference to what boils under Dean’s skin.

 

“I told you, I get it,” he says. “Only, I got left behind Sam, and it hasn’t been an easy ride.” It’s still not strictly fair because their father has been getting better, he has. From when Sam was thirteen and they’d stopped hunting, stopped dragging themselves all round America, to when he was eighteen and walked out the door, those were the bad years. John’s milder, calmer now, the bad days are less frequent, the good days are better. There’s some light at the end of the tunnel. Only, Dean was seventeen when they stopped here and he’s twenty four now, and it isn’t Sam’s fault that his life is this house and stopping his father from strangling strangers to choke the devil out of them, but there’s some days he feels like he’ll never get out himself. Like he's trapped in a box that's too small and still contracting.

 

“Dean,” Sam says, and he’s dropped the toolbag he’d been clutching like it was a lifeline. “Dean, I came back,” and he spreads his hands helplessly - huge hands that he still hasn’t quite grown into, not a teenager, not anymore, but not yet the man he’ll be, the one Dean can see in his face, in the way he moves, like there’s someone else just waiting behind his skin. Quieter, he repeats it, “Dean I came back for you.”

 

Dean can’t take it anymore. Not anything, not the love in Sam’s voice that’s going to burn him alive if he lets it, or the guilt of knowing that his brother’s still going to get pulled right on back in after everything he’s done to try and escape. He can’t take it. Maybe that’s why he does what he does next. Maybe it’s why he drops his wrench and gets right into Sam’s personal space, but Sam isn’t backing down, he’s waiting for him, for a punch or a hug or the moment Dean believes him, braced and ready for any of them, and Dean grasps his shirt, bunches it in his fingers for a second, working uselessly at it as though he can’t decide to pull Sam closer or push him away. There’s a steady awareness in his body that horrifies him, generated it seems by the smell of Sam this close, by the way Dean has to look up to meet his eyes, and he has to get out of there before he does something unforgivable.

 

That’s when Sam, panicked, does the stupid thing that Dean’s been running from like he doesn’t know how to stop, and kisses him. Splits his lip with a tooth because he's lunged too hard and Dean turned away, and that shakes something loose in Dean, destroys him. His lip is tender already, swelling fast, and Sam has horror in his face that Dean thinks matches his own, and all the answers are there, the gaps in Sam’s story, the girlfriend he broke up with because he came back here to the shithouse to end all shithouses, the place he’s been running from since he was old enough to sit his SATs. Dean should step back, and break the way their bodies touch, punch Sam for his own good, send him away for a final time.

 

He’s said it before though, and he’ll say it again, Dean is not a good person and he’s not strong enough to say no to this. Not to the way that Sam kisses him, tender and yielding now as though to apologize for the roughness of the first kiss, and Sam’s learnt all kinds of stuff in college, he must have, and Dean’s still the same stagnant mixed up fuck that he was when Sam left, and the bitterness of it gnaws at him, enough that he bites down hard on Sam’s lip, not a love-bite but enough to draw blood, the blood they share, and Jesus they’ve lived here too long if they’ve picked up the local country habits of incest. It doesn’t hit the way it should, fast jerk of a filthy word, no shot of adrenaline to the bloodstream because he’s been chewing it over for the past two years, head hunched under water in the shower as he blindly jerked himself off to the bitter taste of how much he’d fucked his own brother up - that he’d leave rather than stay close, always the worst case scenario as though that were some twisted comfort.

 

Sam groans under his mouth, pained, not any sound of lust or pleasure, the iron tang strong between them and Dean lets go and breaks away from him, wipes his own mouth with his hand, smears it with blood that isn’t his, doesn’t meet Sam’s eyes or look at how his mouth is swelling like he got punched hard in a backalley brawl. Now he can feel the fight or flight reflex spreading through him, mouth welling up with saliva like the taste of Sam’s blood had been good. Dean swallows stickily, and then again around nothing at all, and heads out into the fields, Children of the Corn style all over again, another job left half done behind him and he’s not talking about the hot water tank.

  


\----

  


Sam for his part heads inside, dazed and shaken and the dim interior is enough to blind him for a second even though it wasn't exactly broad daylight outside - the clock reads a little past seven. There’s a curious dampening of his thoughts as though the shock of what he just did has rendered him incapable of processing it, horror and fear and shame just waiting for their turn. He can't hear anything from his father's bedroom and he looks through the cupboards incuriously on autopilot as though his body needs something to do while his mind shies away from what he just did.

 

He already knows what he'll find, the rows upon rows of cereal, an endless row of breakfasts waiting for consumption. He keeps his eyes on the shelf like that'll block out his thoughts if he wants it to hard enough, reads the back of the packets like it's his job. His lip doesn't just ache, it stings, little pulse of pain every  time he forgets and licks his lips, a persistent reminder of an extra fuck up. Even in the row of Golden Grahams though, he can't forget the bleak appalled look in Dean's eyes when he broke away, mouth stained with Sam's own blood. In the quiet emptiness of the room, he can almost hear the panicked beating of his own heart, no slower now than it was then, as though the full enormity of what he'd done had only just hit.

 

Nothing's changed since he left. He's not sure if it surprises him or not; that the bowls are neatly stacked in the bottom left hand cupboard, that the spoons haven't migrated back to their drawer but instead cluster untidily beside the stove, the same old flypaper pinned up above. There's a comfort and an ease in the familiarity at least, as he makes coffee and eats cereal dry, tries not to think of Dean out in the fields, kicking through the corn, all rage and tension that Sam can't alleviate, never has been able to.  At the edges of his consciousness lurks the things he can’t face right now, and just as he considers biting down hard on his already bruised lip as though the pain will drive the thoughts away, there's a slow tread behind him and he knows that it's his dad. All the old patterns hold true, not just the spoons by the stove, because Sam looks up once to gauge his face - _good day or bad day_  the eternal question, then back down to his bowl when the answer is neither, it's just a day.

 

John sits down and there's silence again, air heavy and expectant like he's waiting for something. "Morning," Sam says, and thinks of where he could be. Jess beside him, beautiful and smart and funny. She raps his hand with a spoon when he reaches for the jelly ahead of time, perfect white kitchen in the sort of house that Sam had had wet dreams about since he was thirteen, her parents smiling at them both like some sort of idyllic magazine shoot - loving boyfriend meets proud parents. He remembers her getting angry when he'd said that, like he'd offended her in some way when he'd been offering the best compliment he knew how to give. It had been one of their only arguments. "You don't know anything about my family," she'd snapped at him, closed herself off, quiet and cold like a stone, not Dean's hot angry rage or Sam's own slowly boiling constant steam of fury, a silence that solidified until she broke out of it, shrugged it off and tried to explain - halting words about how much it sucked being the youngest sibling sometimes, about the brother in an in-patient facility, the sister who never phoned home.

 

Sam had listened, pulled her head down against him when she finally cried, bitter wrenched out tears that sounded like they hurt and wondered what the hell had broken in him that the best he could muster in return was a _my family and I don't get along_. Words as weak as the chamomile tea he'd brewed for Jess, hollow and empty, vessels that carried nothing but lies, and caught in his head still was that image of the Moores, clean scrubbed wooden table and all, dolls posed for a game of happy families that he’d so desperately wanted to join.

 

He realises he's poised with a spoonful halfway to his mouth, like time melts here, one moment enough to catch you in it forever, and his dad gives him a half smile. "You're good Sam," he says, and looks back at his own bowl like he doesn’t want to laugh at Sam's stupid expression. Sam wants to throw the bowl at his head, see the rage that had helped drive him out last time, a tiny spark of it, not this ancient remote man who sits there like he'd stare at the wall all day if he could. Instead Sam puts the bowl in the sink, and runs the tap, cold still, looks like it might be for a while, and he can feel the wrench in his hand and Dean’s fingers on his shirt, twisting in the fabric, like a double vision imposed on the room, the only real thing since he’s been home.

 

"Going to Martin's today?" he asks. He thinks Dean would have said something if John had got thrown out and told not to come back, though maybe he wouldn't have. Not like Dean gave daily updates, or weekly or yearly even. The only things Sam had known about home were from John's careful letters that he sent when he could, sometimes two or three a week and then nothing for months, maybe when John remembered, when he forgave Sam for breaking the cardinal Winchester rule, never leave a man behind. As much as anything else - their house, their dishes, their clothes, it was carefully recycled. It belonged first to the Marines and only then to the Winchesters, well-used, a maxim ground in and down, holstered alongside your gun and your pride. Sam itched under the heavy weight, can’t escape it still. He’d thought he had, thought Stanford would kick it out of him, wring him clean of all the accumulated guilt, sponge it from his bones, a fresh start, but he’s back like he can’t stay away, blood and sugar in his mouth, heat on his neck like the way Dean had got a hand round it had branded him

 

“Sure,” John says, like there’s no reason he wouldn’t, gives Sam a tolerant look that doesn’t belong on his face. John had by turns in their earliest years been stern, autocratic, a majestic figure whose authority had been absolute, his word final no matter how fallible he’d been, the first thing Sam had known to kick against. He’d never been tolerant. Sam doesn’t even think of wishing it was a bad day instead though because that would only tempt fate. “You and Dean fixing the water?”

 

“I guess,” Sam says, and in his memory Dean’s hand moves in his hair, the solid line of him pressed up close. Sam’s caught in the hideous hinterland of guessing what his father knows, whether he knew Sam had gone, would be going all over again, or if John’d drifted back a few years, memory as disordered as the rest of him. “Anything else I should do?”

 

“Guns cleaned?” John asks, and that placed him a little more firmly in time since Dean hadn’t let the key to the reinforced gun cabinet out of his own pocket in six years, not since the time with the rifle and the neighbours who dropped by to say hi.

 

“Sure thing,” Sam lies, though he hasn’t touched the guns himself since that time three years ago when the thing in the dark that even Bobby Singer couldn’t put a name to had almost killed them all. He wonders what his father sees when he looks at Sam, how he reconciles him in his mind with the memories he has, hates the nameless pity that wells up in him all over again as it always does, tainted with everything else he feels, and the voice that tells him that if John were himself that would be the last straw. His lip stings abruptly, and he tries not to think of Dean again, of his mouth sweet against Sam’s for one second before he got his wordless dig in. Thinks even if his father was cognizant enough to realise what his sons were up to, that  Sam's pity would still destroy him faster. “Sure thing, dad,” he says again, like the first time wasn’t enough, like he can pretend to be the good son for thirty seconds.

 

John nods, satisfied, resumes his intimate stare at the wall, like chipped magnolia paint holds the meaning of the universe. With John fallen away somewhere deep inside himself all over again, Sam's left behind alone, and now there’s no way not to think about Dean, no distraction. When he drifts into what he supposes is now their bedroom, rifles through his bag in aimless search of something he knows isn’t in there, his gaze keeps sliding off the bed, no matter how much he taunts himself. It’s why you came back, the fucked up bit of him says. Tell yourself it’s dad, tell yourself it’s the guilt. And it is, it is those things, like Stanford never filled up all the emptiness in him that he thought it would, didn’t neatly polyfiller all the gaps and paint them over until he was clean and fresh and normal. It’s just not only those things.

 

He wishes they’d never stopped travelling, thinks he’d never have left if they hadn’t. Things would have been better, he imagines, if they’d had a purpose. He might not have needed Stanford if they were killing the things that hid in the dark, doing something solid and appreciable. It didn’t need to be like this, that half-wished for dream for a home come to fruition like he’d fondled a monkey’s paw before he ever thought it. Maybe if he’d grown up with no version of normality not this half-assed one, then he wouldn’t miss it, would have nothing to compare it with. He can remember being thirteen and self-righteously convinced that nothing could be better than one home in one town, not trailing across the countryside in pursuit of the thing that killed their mother.

 

That’s the one thing they’ve never talked about, him and Dean, not in all the years they’ve only had each other. They are the weirdos from upback with the messed-up dad and the whole town looking at them with its head on one side just waiting for the crazy to show, and they've never spoken about the fact that the hunt got left behind, that somewhere out there was the thing that had killed their mom. It gnaws at him now he’s older, that they never finished it, never tied off that loose end, never avenged her death. He thinks Dean feels the same way, but if there’s one thing that’s guaranteed to send their father off the deep end, it’s even mentioning their mother. Last time, he’d got Sam by the throat, almost strangled him, eyes mad and unseeing like he was fighting something else in his head. The marks had stayed for days, choking him everytime he breathed in too deeply, and he’d worn a scarf to school, heedless of the looks people gave him like they knew exactly what he was hiding.  It couldn’t have been worse surely, new schools every month, new faces. There'd have been none of the same endless undying judgement that came when a town was small enough that everyone knew everyone’s dirty secrets and then made up some more for good measure.

 

Face down on the bed, surrounded by the inevitable smell of Dean, he can feel this place threading through him again, sinking into his skin. Invisible tiny tendrils that breaking will hurt and not breaking will destroy, like every second here, every second of Dean’s mouth on his, and the smell of him all around, and their father in the kitchen holding a silent conversation with a wall, and the small townness of it all, the dreadful unending continuation of it all. If he thinks, he can feel Dean beside him, hot feverish teenage strength as he’d held Sam close in the worst of the black nights. He'd let Sam sleep next to him instead of in his own room when Sam knocked at the door, the only solid thing left in the world, and Jesus they never had a chance. He tries thinking of Stanford, of the coolness inside and the startling, maintained green outside, but it’s faded, like he’s remembering long ago instead of two days before. It shouldn’t be this hard, he thinks. He shouldn’t have come back.

  


The bed dips down but Sam isn’t startled. He’d know Dean anywhere from that stupid thing he does where he gets on the bed knees first before he turns over and settles down. Sam doesn’t move, bites down on his lip to invoke the pain of the most recent time he’s fucked things up. Brady used to tell him that he was like a machine when it came to crunching facts. All the logical analysis he’d brought into surviving highschool finally reaping its reward in college, but none of that flies here. He didn’t weigh the risks of kissing Dean, he just acted, like one night back home had driven him right back to the person he was before he left, inappropriate crush and all. He opens his eyes, body pressed into the bed, dark vision tinged with light, breathes in the scent of cotton, damp from his breath and waits.

  


Dean doesn’t disappoint, walks his hand down Sam’s spine, hesitates at the dip where his back curves into his ass and stops, rests there, warm and heavy on Sam’s skin through his shirt, and Sam thinks of all those textbooks in neat medical rows in the library, all the sneaking into lectures he wasn’t signed up for, all of the knowledge he’s accumulated about what this is, how fucked up it means they are, how he’s damaged beyond repair because he couldn’t stick the course and break it off. But none of it, none of it means anything in comparison to this, to the way that Dean’s rucked up just a little of his shirt, exposes a sliver of skin and just runs his thumb along it, slow and sure, like this isn’t Dean freaking out all over the place.

 

Sam can feel every minute portion of his skin respond, draws in a deeper breath. He feels Dean lean in closer, too warm now and too close, as smothering as he’s comforting, as Dean gets his whole hand under Sam’s shirt, splayed on the skin of his back like he’s working up to second base with a girl, nails blunt against Sam's spine, an idle rhythm and Sam wants. Wants more than he can handle wanting. Doesn’t care where he is, that they haven’t talked about this at all. He can hear Dean’s breathing, fast and shallow now, and when he hauls his face out of the mattress, Dean looks at him like he’s the only thing that matters, and it makes something in Sam’s gut twist in pain, in recognition. Sam’s sloughing off Stanford and Russian doll dreams of perfect families, they’re splintering under this, the force of reality, the onslaught of every year of his life adding up and this being the sum. Dean’s matching it, he thinks, in the only way he knows how, reaching out and pulling Sam back in, and Christ, Sam is willing. He thinks about how Dean thinks Sam is leaving at the end of this, but he’ll still do it, is overcome by the same urge Sam is.

 

Outside the door John says impatiently that he needs a ride, and with a groan Dean stands up, pupils huge in his face like he’s on something, the thinnest rim of colour around them, and Sam can see him shake, feels himself mirror it, all down his legs, finest fear tremor from just one touch. Then he'd gone with John, and Sam’s alone with his thoughts and a half-hard dick from the merest brush, and the same sickly shapeless fear in his belly at what this means. When he closes his eyes, he dreams a dream that’s mostly a memory.

 

In the dream it's golden and perfect and he's seventeen, sitting alone in a wheat-field, staring at his schoolbooks. If he looks up he can see the sky, blue and serene, empty of everything. It's never been as quiet as this before that he can remember - there's not an engine running in the background, not so much as a bird crying out. There's not even a breath of wind to stir the wheat, and although if he listens closely he can hear the tiny whirr of insects on the stalks, unfocused like this he can't even hear that. A heavy hand falls on his shoulder, a shadow blots out the sun for a second, welcome shade falling over his flushed face as Dean tuts and squats in front of him brandishing a tube of sunblock, like Sam's an idiot. Sam pretends to scowl because he's sitting in the middle of a field, crushing crops around him for a reason and that reason is getting left alone. He can't muster up any real anger though and Dean knows that, opens the tube and squirts him in the face with it, a squirt hitting his nose and like that they're fighting, because that's what Dean does when he's bored. He antagonizes Sam.

 

They fight until they're breathless, doing more damage to a farmer's field in three minutes of low-down wrestling than mites probably do in a month. Sam doesn't feel guilty though. He's too busy gulping in hot thick air and trying to stop Dean from cheating like the fucker Dean is, by tickling him, getting his fingers deep into his ribs. In the memory, that’s where it stops, Dean convulsed in helpless laughter until he can choke out that they need to get back, the constant refrain of their lives - make sure Dad’s okay, and it’s one of the few rare fully happy moments that Sam can remember.

  


In the dream it doesn’t stop. Sam’s hard and breathless, and when Dean rolls him over to get rid of the prying fingers, Sam rocks against him, sharp edges of the wheat prickling him all over underneath, unbearable heat of Dean and the sun above, and he’s breaking apart, sun in his eyes and he squints until all he can see is the dark outline of Dean against the sky and all he can feel is Dean’s hand on him over his shorts, hesitant. Pulls him down until they’re hip to hip, messy and reckless and ridiculous, wants to kiss him but slips right off like the dream will only extend so far, and when Sam opens his eyes, he doesn’t even know if it was a dream at all, the memory so sharp, so realistic that he could almost smell the earthy green smell of the crushed wheat, feel the dirt under his nails from clawing at the ground. He’s all the way hard now, gets his hand into his boxers and clutches at his dick like that’ll help, teenage mistake right there. He keeps an ear open for the car - whatever is between him and Dean, he doesn’t want to be caught masturbating to a dream, goes off like a rocket at the phantom pressure of Dean’s lips on his cheekbone, the press of his body against him, shudders into his hand.

  


Uncaught in the act as he was, there’s no hiding what he’s done when Dean gets back, sharp smell still in the air and Dean stands still for a moment in the doorway, until, deceptively casual he strolls over and slaps Sam on his shoulder. “If you want to take a shower after that, you’d better give me a hand,” and there’s a familiar flare of heat that twitches across his face that Sam recognises, that he’s seen before once or twice. He trails after Dean and they're back to where they were that morning, Sam handing tools over, Dean doing arcane things with them that may or may not work.

 

Sam imagines the rest of his life like this, a small town, small people, a father who might get a little better but would never _be_  better. So tangled together with Dean that they’d never have anything else, none of the things Sam wants, none of the things he left to get - not the money to even try and fix John if it can even be done, not the freedom to move and change and even the thought of it all presses phantom pressure against his throat like a gentle compression of his windpipe. Then there’s the rest of it, Dean against the wall oblivious to everything as he fiddles with a pipe, and he doesn’t even know, can’t even imagine what to do. Thinks that with the slightest tap, pressure applied just right, he’ll shake apart into a million unfixable pieces.

  


Dean doesn’t touch him again. Not when the shower is fixed and Sam spends most of his time in it vacillating between anger and fear at the desperate need that runs through his bones, or that night in bed where they echo again the straight unyielding lines of a properly drawn family tree. Sam doesn’t reach out, bruised lip reminding him of the risk, just watches Dean and waits, forces himself to be patient not to lunge and grab. Dean barely even looks at him, like he’s angry all over again, some deep wellspring of it bubbling out of him, repressed and denied and hidden but spilling out of the cracks, and Sam thinks again of living here. Of nights in the same shitty bed, the taste of sweat on Dean’s skin, the prying gaze of quasi-strangers who know everything there is to know about him according to their lights and the crushing eternal weight of this house, no future in it. Turns it over in his mind fruitlessly, no solution to it ever.

 

On the third night they sleep together, hands to themselves, acceptable decent inch between their skins, Sam dreams. It’s not the first time he’s dreamed this dream - there’s a yellow eyed man watching him in cracked mirrors and when he touches Sam, it’s with feather-soft hands like he wants to draw him in. Then there’s fire and someone on the ceiling screaming, torn open and set on fire, a living pyrotechnic display and he almost chokes on his tongue. He realises as he wakes, that he’s making grunting noises like strangled screams, and Dean’s there, hand on his chest, bringing him up and out of it. Sam focuses on that touch until Dean pulls away, settles back down. Sam stares at the ceiling, feels the sweat dry cold and clammy on his skin until with a muffled grunt, Dean turns over, fits his knees into the back of Sam’s legs, throws an arm over him, suffocating and unavoidable and it’s too fucking hot for it, but it feels too damn good to turn down. He lies there, breathes in evenly, sweat pooling at the base of his spine, feels the press of Dean’s soft dick against his ass and tries not to think of the yellow eyed man.

  


In the morning, they’ve separated, though Dean’s hand is still on Sam’s arm, and Sam holds his breath for a long moment before he gets up, already in the routine like he’d never ever left it, and he knows he should be worried. Should want to run before he can’t but the touch of Dean against his skin wears away at his sanity it seems, and he makes and eats his second breakfast in twelve hours if you include last night's dinner, at the table with John. He follows Dean into town to where Dean works before he splits to see if he can find some part time work himself, easily slipping back into the old pace of their life.

  


Sam comes back home with a fistful of leaflets and a couple of forms, and Dean pushes him down onto the couch and blows him, with a single-minded ferocity that scares the shit out of Sam as much as it arouses him, because he’d bet his student debt that Dean’s never blown anyone before, town too small for that, Dean’s reputation with the girls already bad enough. He sinks his fingers into his thighs (later examines the dark bruises he leaves on his own skin) so he can resist forcing Dean down further, opens his legs and lets Dean work, mouth wet and tight and so good it hurts. He’s so on edge he could’ve come in seconds, but Dean takes big breaths and takes it slow, draws it out like he doesn’t mind at all, hand coaxing more of Sam in, until his eyes water and Sam's strung up and out at the mere touch of Dean against him. He can’t protest, can only feebly jerk up against the sweet pressure of Dean’s tongue, thrust his hand in his own mouth and bite down hard, a second set of self inflicted marks from one blowjob. He doesn’t like to think what would happen if they had sex. Dean doesn’t say what brought that on afterwards, gives Sam an inscrutable look and jerks himself off, elbows Sam away when Sam tries to reciprocate, like a mouth for a mouth would make the whole world mute, and there’s whisky on his breath, sour and strong like a cover for what he feels.

  


Sam gets a part time job in a shop, mostly, he suspects, from the owner’s sheer need to get every single detail of his family life out of him, a curiosity as oddly impersonal as it is devouring. Every night he comes back, helps out with his dad depending what the day has been like, and sleeps toe to toe with Dean, choking on nightmares and half-remembered dreams, Stanford retreating further from him like a dog-eared porn mag, guiltily pored over once and ruined. From habit, he has a beer or two, no more, frugality a watchword he can’t seem to break. He slides away from all the ways that had showed, how his life at Stanford had been constructed and maintained on the same pleasant lies as he told Mr Sorenson, his boss, straight to his face. Father a war veteran, Dean the good son who stayed home, Sam the bright one who left for college, the neatness of the roles comforting and alien. No space in there for Dean’s breath on the back of Sam’s neck or how close his hand comes to resting on Sam’s dick as he chivvies Sam out of a nightmare. No room for how every time he takes a breath he feels like he might choke on it. The time away from Dean doesn’t help, they don’t need to be in the same room to screw each other up.

  


They don’t take the local newspaper - John’s reputation is better than a mad dog for keeping the junk away but Sam picks up a copy on a whim at work when he’s left his book at home, flicks through it half-heartedly as he takes his coffee-break. The paper is more an excuse to avoid talking than holding any endless fascination in its own right. He scans the jobs first, through force of habit, then the community section for the socially morbid interest of possibly spotting people he used to go to school with. The story that grabs him though is frontpage stuff. Three heart attacks in the same old abandoned house. Sam knows it. It’s where Dean went to do stupid shit in school on the rare rare times that it’d been possible, because a supposedly haunted house was a highschool kid’s playground.

  


Sam had been himself once or twice, rebellion twisting in his stomach like it'd been a fuck you to John even if their dad never knew about it, a way of walking that line and pretending like he was normal for all of thirty seconds. He'd never seen anything there, never felt anything, though he'd kept these stupid little sachets of salt in his pockets that Dean made him carry, like it would do any good at all, so maybe that was why. He can't forget it though, vaguely remembers John telling them _three's the magic number_. One death is unlucky, two is maybe coincidence (but don't take the chance), three is a pattern smacking you in the face. It goes round and round in his head for the rest of the day, he can't stop thinking about it. _Three_. He tries not to think of their father's face, broken up and twisted in grief and confusion the last time they'd hunted, the hunt that made John accept that they were done for good. Tries not to think of the heavy sarcasm Dean would breathe. _Anything's better than home, huh Sam?_

 

He takes the paper with him anyways when he clocks off. Thinks that maybe he'll phone Bobby and let him know - if he can find Bobby's number in the messiness of the kitchen drawers where Dean shoves everything he can't be bothered to deal with. If he digs beneath the bills and the ten year old greaseproof paper that had been there when they moved in, Sam wonders if he'll find all the fucks Dean doesn't seem to give anymore about anything. Only it doesn't work out that way because nothing ever does. He leaves the paper on the table and that's his first mistake because _John_  finds it. There's a reason they don't talk hunting anymore around him, it triggers his most violent impulses - the only topic of conversation that fucks him up worse is the barest mention of his wife.

 

Sam has this kind of hope for a second when he sees his dad studying the paper. That everything's going to be all right. No matter how much Dean accuses him of being a downer, it's Sam who's always been the optimist while Dean seems to think that if you expect the worst, there's nothing else the world can throw at you. Which is fucking stupid because Sam knows from bitter experience that there's always something worse than you can imagine. But as it stands, he's always had these weird little hiccups, nothing more than fleeting moments where he feels that it's all going to be fine, breathless moments of hope encapsulated in the eye of the storm - never anything more than a temporary floating relief before the shit hits the fan. He has one right that second, a moment of time enough for him to construct this fantasy that in some opposite universe, hearing about this job will make John better.

 

It doesn’t, and he knew that it wouldn’t but it’s still a kick when John looks up and he’s not there anymore. Not the dad Sam remembers from before this nor the one who hangs on day by day, grimly doing the best he can. And it’s why he came back when all’s said and done. Because he got out, but you don’t get away from this, you don’t leave a man behind. It’s a fight he can’t be sure of winning, because only one of them wants to hurt the other, and Sam hasn’t fought properly in two years. Pushing a drunk off his girlfriend in a bar isn’t fighting, and he’s taller now than he used to be, more awkward. There’s no point talking John down when he’s like this, in the first edge of the anger because he can’t even hear what’s being said, so Sam saves his breath and tries not to get pinned as John makes him for him, deadly and intent. Winchester family trait, Sam thinks, solve it with your fists, so bonedeep you don't even need to be yourself for it to kick in.

 

John smashes a chair against the wall, brutally efficient, picks up the chair leg and Sam's resorted to hoping he can dodge, maybe get in close and risk going hand to hand. When Dean comes running in, Sam feels relief flood him. Dean’s an extra pair of experienced hands, and John’s not stupid, even like this. He knows he’s outnumbered, presses his back against a wall and watches them with empty eyes like he thinks they’ll attack. Sam wonders what exactly it is that he’s seeing when he looks at them. Sam starts talking then, low and mindless, feels Dean’s gaze burn hot on the side of his face, and John’s relaxing, just a little. Sam doesn’t even know what he’s saying - stupid things, pointless things. But it’s words and he guesses most of the things John hunted in his time didn’t talk like this. When John’s fingers loosen on the chair leg he’s holding and a dreadful semi-awareness returns to his eyes, Dean’s there like Sam can’t be, one hand on his father’s shoulder, the other taking a bottle of tablets from his pocket, shaking them out into the palm of his hand. They’re a sedative but they generally only work after an attack, like there’s no pill in the world that’ll tackle the full force of John Winchester’s misery.

  


Afterwards, John's silent, if not happy, and in bed with a book he won’t read before he slides into oblivious sleep, room locked up tight, shutters down. Dean paces up and down and Sam watches him, waits for the inevitable, spine steeled for the words Dean had thrown at him, the first day he’d got back. How he’d left. But nothing comes out, Dean choking back the words as though they didn’t already trot through Sam’s mind at night. Instead Dean's screwing his fingers into the neck of Sam’s shirt and yanking him close, like if they’re pressed up against each other, Sam won’t see the desolate look on Dean's face, mirror image of the empty pit inside Sam that nothing can ever fill.

 

When they make it to the bedroom, the curtains are closed and the room is dark, and Dean’s fingers are already crawling to Sam’s jean buttons, yanking them free like they’ve done him a personal wrong, before he pulls off his own shirt and then pulls Sam close. It’s easier like this in the dark - Sam can’t see the scar on Dean's chest where he learnt how dangerous it was to play with knives. He can’t see anything but a dim outlined shape, can’t see the shape of Dean’s eyes or the cleverness of his mouth, can only feel his gaze and appreciate the way that mouth gets to work on him. There’s no words spelt out with the movement of Dean’s lips against his skin but Sam hears the question that’ll never be asked - _are you staying?_

 

 _Yes_ , he thinks, _yes_. He’ll stay no matter the cost, or at least his body tells him so. His answer is as silent as the question. Sam twists them around so Dean’s underneath, reaches out and turns the lamp on, soft yellow light spilling out of the shade, bulb dim but enough to see by because the dark is easier and that’s not what he wants. Dean’s still and silent for one long second before he lets out a sigh and pulls Sam down, steady and close against each other and what had been slow, unhurried frottage changes.

 

Sex has never felt like this before, Sam thinks dimly, doesn't want to consider too closely the reasons for that. Sex with Jess was awesome and fun, she'd made him feel good, and he thinks he did the same for her if the way she sounded had been any indication at all. Sex with Dean, isn't _good_. Sex with Dean is three parts fight and one part reluctant co-operation, fingers fumbling at pants at the same moment, fingers bent back painfully when Dean rips them down any old way, and Sam can't understand what this does to him, the liquid hunger every touch evokes, until he feels like he needs out of his skin, needs to wriggle free from it because the heat is driving him mad. They're already slick and wet from the heat of the air around them, slippery and clumsy. He gets his t-shirt off with a minimum of aggro and Dean draws him down again just like that, thighs uncomfortable around Sam's legs, thick heavy dick poking out of his jeans, a moment of absurdity that almost draws a hysterical giggle from Sam, before Dean bites down hard and every urge to laugh vanishes, and he needs more than he can say, to do this, put the seal on the thing that's been brewing between them. He wants to smear messy handprints over the clean expanse of the last two years.  

 

Dean gets a hand between them, strokes his own dick, digs those blunt teeth deeper into Sam's skin and pulls, and Sam can't help the sound he makes, half way between pain and being turned the fuck on. It doesn't feel good, it feels relentless, as though in that second, it's something he has to endure, but the throb of his skin syncs up with the relentlessness of his heartbeat, loud enough that he thinks it might thump out of his chest and there’s words for what it does to him. His lip gives one fierce twitch as though in reminder of the first time Dean set his teeth to him. He's not about to let it slide though. He licks his way along Dean's neck, wet and sloppy and not doing much at all, prickling Dean with a return threat of teeth, as Dean's hands slide down Sam’s back, dip into his boxers, and send a hot-chill adrenaline rush up his spine. He gets all the way to Dean's ear, and speaks the truth - or at least the truth as he knows it, mumbled shattered words that might not even make any sense, words that would make his blood run cold if he said them in the light of day, anywhere but here with whisky fire in his veins, and the adrenaline still pumping through his blood.

 

Dean's breath hitches, and Sam swallows the silence with a kiss so Dean can't say anything back. Any tiny bit of finesse he's learnt has been lost somewhere along the way, and Dean's no better off - he sucks on Sam's tongue until it almost hurts, dull aching throb in his mouth to match his dick and his skin, like there's no bit of him that isn't going to bear the marks of this tomorrow. He's barely aware that he has his fingers too tight around Dean's dick, and too slow if the aggrieved sound Dean makes into his mouth is any indication, and he speeds it up. Sam’s hips ache from the effort of not grinding close, sudden desperate pulls of his hand as he _wants_  things he can't even name. Not just this, and he thinks of Dean's mouth on him, of the way he'd sucked him off - brutally, like an atonement for things done and said, and his dick twitches, wet and sticky in its cloth prison. The angle is all wrong, and Dean's pulling him closer, but Sam wants to feel Dean come like this, all over his hands, to reach the point at which they've gone so far that turning back is out of his hands, like they haven't reached that point a thousand times over already.

 

It doesn't feel right or perfect, there's no ease to the way they touch, but it feels necessary, like everything else that draws Sam back, to here, to this place, to the moment he's spent too long running from. Getting his jeans down is a nightmare, toes clawing at the ends, too damp and sticky on him clinging like a second skin. He thinks dimly of skinwalkers, feels just like them, like there's something monstrous inside him that's squirming out of a disguise, naked and wet, and as Dean gets a hand back round his neck and pulls him down, it's like calling to like. He can feel this _sound_  welling up in his throat that he’s never heard before from himself or anyone else, can't let it escape. Lets it out into Dean's skin, feels him jerk up as though the touch of Sam’s mouth burns.

 

He’s lost for a long second, doesn’t even know what he wants, a vast horizon spreading out before him, all the shameful half-formed things he’s ever thought about pushing their way up to the forefront of his mind. Wants Dean’s mouth back on his dick like it’s an ache inside him, remembers again the wet gleam of his eyes as he pinned Sam down with only his mouth, wonders what it’d feel like to reciprocate. He’s sucked one dude off in his life, before he met Jess, remembers being so drunk and lonely, thoughts of home in his head, that it’d seemed like a good idea to find the nearest dude with broad shoulders and green eyes who’d let Sam go down on him so he could stifle himself, drive the thoughts out of his mind.

 

It seems like a good idea at that second and he gets his hand round Dean’s dick and then his lips, hears Dean cry out and then shut himself up, shifting restlessly under Sam’s mouth, rich bitter taste of him curling round Sam’s tongue and it’s no easier sober, he feels choked and breathless, jams himself down a little further because he’s not chickening out, not when he finally gets this, whatever it is. His belly heaves and it’s like there’s a heavy hand on his back pressing him further down, one step walked on this path, before Dean’s pulling him off with a slurred _you idiot_ , which Sam would take offense to, if Dean wasn’t leaning forward, smearing away the wetness from Sam’s mouth and replacing his dick with his tongue, fingers stroking down the side of his jaw like he can’t believe Sam would do this for him, like he’s never been able to believe that something halfway good might be intended for him.

 

Between them still, Dean’s dick is almost obscene, wet from Sam’s mouth and Sam still wants something, he can’t say what because he doesn’t even know, only knows that even this is not enough. Wonders if Dean would let Sam fuck him like this, spread out on the bed and begging for it, the resistance of his body no match for the welcome in his arms. He knows Dean would do it, would turn over for him gladly when he’s never done it before, and it’s why he can’t ask no matter how much he wants it, not today. Can’t let Dean, who probably thinks Sam’s leaving all over again, do that for him, and he can’t offer it himself, too afraid of Dean pulling away as though that’s the barrier he can’t cross, the one thing he won’t do. Maybe later, when this isn’t so new that it can’t be shattered with a word, they’ll test those boundaries together.

 

So instead he jerks Dean off, hip close, rhythm finally found between them, long sweet slide of Dean through his fingers, and he can barely take it all in, the smell of Dean’s skin, the flutter of his eyelashes as he closes his eyes for a moment as though he can’t take it any longer, ducks his head once and licks the head of Dean’s cock on a downstroke more for the show of it than anything else and Dean jerks with the force of his orgasm, head snapping back as he comes all over Sam’s hand, twitching with the aftermath and Sam can’t stop touching him, gentler now, slower but wanting every last moment, everything that Dean has to give.

 

Dean pushes him down and sucks him off after that, like one blowjob makes him an expert, lets Sam get his hands in his hair this time as he spreads Sam’s thighs and gets between them, bulk of his shoulders most of what Sam can see as he keeps his head down. Sam thrusts up into Dean’s mouth, chases the edge, traces the curve of Dean’s cheek before he grips his hair again and Dean moans around him, unexpected and raw, pulls off for a second and sucks two fingers gets them wet before he turns his attention back to the task at hand - getting as much of Sam down his throat as he can manage before he wriggles a finger up into Sam, like he knows Sam needs the final edge, the press of being taken too far, too fast, like he owns Sam enough to know what to do with him, and that gets Sam the last of the way there, hot rush of pleasure liquid in him as he pulses into Dean’s mouth, clenches down hard.

 

There’s silence afterwards that Sam doesn’t want to break, closes his eyes and feels Dean crawl back up beside him, febrilely hot along the left side of his body, fingers brushing Sam’s hip for a moment and those he thinks they’ve gone too far. Sam turns towards him and shares air for a second, can see Dean’s face, the hope in it, ready to retreat at a moment’s notice, closes his eyes and moves in closer. In the morning he’s telling Dean outright that he’s staying. For now, he wants to sleep, wants the heavy presence of Dean beside him to ward away any dreams.

  


The living room is dark when Sam walks out, feeling his way through the murky gloom towards the kitchen, mouth parched, skin sore. He swills out a glass and then downs as much water as he can, refills it for Dean who'll bitch about his thirst when he finally wakes up. When he stumbles over a shoe, he lets out a silent fuck, a long exhale and in the darkness there's a tsk.

 

Ice-water cascaded down Sam's spine, his mouth instantly dry again. "Who's there?" he says quietly, tries to shout for Dean but chokes on the words like there's cottonwool in his mouth.

 

"I'm hurt you don't know me Sammy," says a voice that sounds too familiar. "We share a connection, I assure you." The light flicks on and Sam sees him, the glint of recognisable yellow eyes, a grin with too many teeth, and part of him relaxes. A dream. "Not a dream," the man said a little dryly, but then he's said that before as well and Sam isn't convinced. "I'm here to give you a present Sam. Something you've been lacking. A purpose. Can't have you staying here forever when we both know that's not what you're destined for."

 

Sam knows what comes next - he's seen this dream before after all, seen the burning, and finally he screams as the room erupts into flames, that spread wildly from the ceiling, to the curtains and the battered furniture, as John Winchester stares vacantly down at him from where he's wreathed with flames on the ceiling. It's a scene he's seen a thousand times though never with his father in the victim’s place, it’s seared onto his retinas and he still can't believe it's real until the smell hits, the unmistakable horrific scent of burning flesh, a detail that's never been there before, and he chokes on it, on the acrid smoke, feels himself begin to singe, then he knows that this is happening.

 

It's on autopilot that he runs for the bedroom, where Dean's sleeping the sleep of the just, an unnatural sleep, Sam thinks and he can't wait for Dean to wake up properly, has to get him out before the gas cylinder in the kitchen goes, drags him like once Dean dragged him out of a burning building. Can't think of his father on the ceiling, burning to death for a _purpose,_  the sick unholy twin of his mother, can't think of anything except getting out.

  


\---

  


The car is pretty much undamaged - it's the only thing they have left, the house a ruin, nothing that can be done. Bobby Singer drawn by the news, drops by, tells them to visit, that he’ll get them started or in Dean’s case back on the road, straight and simple, and neither of them question it. They sit beside each other in the car and their dreams burn over and over inside their skulls, along with the simple vital question of how else it could have gone. Sam can't even wonder what he could have done to stop it - the demon's words pound behind his eyes, a dull constant ache of apprehension, guilt and fear.

 

Dean folds his fingers over Sam’s knee and Sam lets him, squeezes them back before they pull out onto the road, leave the house behind, kick dust over the town and shake their boots of the place. There’s a demon to hunt and work to do.

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Content notes: Major character death (not Sam or Dean, themes of mental illness, physical abuse and graphic sex.
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> Feedback really appreciated. You can comment here or at my LJ here stripysockette.livejournal.com/47229.html


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